[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up you guys? Welcome to the Chris Stefanik show. Today I'm with Dr. Peter Malinowski. Jesus said to love others as you love yourself.
What the heck does that mean? We're gonna dive into exactly what that means. Not just in your thoughts, but also in your actions and tangible ways. If you're a self hater, if you deal with those thoughts that constantly rip you down on the inside, we're gonna teach you how to reverse that thinking. And it can send your entire life in a different direction. You can't afford to miss this one. And frankly, you need to share this one with someone in your life. And special gift just for our Daily Anchor subscribers. Two reflections from Cardinal Cantalamesa that he made just for us, just for you guys. Because we love you guys. Cardinal Cantal mesa was the preacher to the papal household under John Paul II Benedict xvi, part of Pope Francis pontificate. The guy might legit be canonized as saint. And I'm so excited about what he has to say about Joy.
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Dr. Peter Malinowski. Can't get enough of you. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: I can't get enough of being here. Like you're really gracious to have me on so many times. I appreciate it. It's great to be here.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: You're a serious blessing.
If there's an area of my ministry where I take heat, well, it may be two areas. One, and this is the stupidest complaint I've ever read. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to say that. No complaint is stupid. No question is dumb. No, but seriously, people will literally take the time to go to our website, find info at and send a message saying you smile too much.
Not sorry. I am so not sorry for that.
Okay, but the second one, when I talk about self love.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Ah yeah.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: And preaching the truth to yourself and getting in there and working to get in agreement with God. With your self talk, which most people aren't even aware that this inner dialogue's happening.
And drawing from the words of the one who literally found us worth dying for.
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: And correcting the things in our mind that aren't in agreement with him. People will take issue with that and think that doesn't sound humble, it doesn't sound Christian. I've read the saints who have said that we are just dirt. Yes, yes, yes. Tell me, because you do a lot more work in this specific area than I do, how is this completely essential for psychological health but also for spiritual health in the Christian life? What's your response to that kind of concern?
[00:02:59] Speaker B: So the first thing is I've worked with a lot of people who didn't love themselves and none of them are holy.
You know, some of it is just like practical experience.
And I've worked with some of those people that really believe that you shouldn't love yourself.
And they were true to it. They didn't love themselves and they were miserable.
So I would also say, look, you know, if God loves you, shouldn't you imitate him?
Right.
There was an author, Anders Nygren, had a huge influence in the 20th century. He was a bishop in the Church of Sweden.
And he really popularized this idea that he had this reified, extremely pure image of charity that denied the human aspects of love is the best way I could summarize it.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: Denied the human aspects of love.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Denied the human aspects of love.
And if you don't love yourself, that means you don't value yourself.
That means that you don't see yourself as worthy of being a gift to anyone.
And that's tragic.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: So.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: The sentiment from the saints, you know, where they condemn self love, I think there's a lot of semantic confusion about that. I talk about this a lot in episode 98 on what Catholics need to know about self love.
There is a misunderstanding of what it means to be selfish.
You know, equating self love with selfishness.
And I think it's done a lot of harm, to be honest with you. I don't know how many times I had to pry the Imitation of Christ, that book by Thomas A. Kempis, out of the hands of people who were really looking at themselves as wretched worms.
And that's not. That's not what they needed. That's not what was helpful to them. That's not to say that there's not a lot of good in that book. It's a spiritual classic, second most published book after the Bible, et cetera. But if you take that literally that.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: You are a worm, a wretched worm. Would Almighty God die on a cross for a worm?
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think you're getting at that. And I think part of it's also a reaction against a kind of.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: And I don't think by the way, Campus even literally meant that.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't.
Some of that's the language of the times and the hyperbole to try to, you know, But I think if you follow that to its logical conclusion, you know, and you actually believe these sorts of things, you're going to wind up in a very miserable and isolated place.
And so the second great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, if you're busy hating yourself, are you supposed to hate your neighbor? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
But I think what's happened is that there has been also a reaction against loving yourself as being a justification for self indulgence or for, you know, self gratification as opposed to love. Because sometimes loving yourself means that you're going to frustrate yourself.
Remember what love is, right?
It's seeking the highest good for a person, whether that's yourself or whether it's for somebody else.
It's actually about willing the highest good. But it's more than just willing. It's about having the capacity to carry out those good intentions.
So it's not just benevolence, which is goodwill, bene, you know, good voluntas goodwill.
But beneficence is the capacity to carry it out, Right? So it's developing that.
Because your brain surgeon could have all the good intentions in the world for you, but if he's not competent, he's not helping you, right? So he's not loving you. So it's about that. And then also really, we're starting to bring in more of the affective aspects of this, the emotional aspects of this. To love somebody not just with the will, but with the heart.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Hey, friend. I want to invite you into something that's changing lives. Every single day, people all over the world are rediscovering their faith, finding real joy and learning how to share the gospel with confidence. And guess what? These lives are forever being transformed because of our Missionaries of Joy, our incredible monthly supporters.
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That really helps draw the very simple distinction between when self love is healthy and holy and when it becomes self indulgent. Am I willing to show myself the tough love that I'll show my child when I want the best out of my kid? I don't just let my kid do whatever, whatever he wants or whatever she wants.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: I set boundaries and rules and I'll punish my kid. And that's real self love.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah, if you.
But in a way that's not vindictive. Right. So going back to.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: It's horrible parenting.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Right, right, right. Cause that's what unfortunately happens a lot of the time is that parental discipline or punishment can flow from anger and, and a desire to express aggression rather than thinking about what is the highest good for the child in this situation.
And so what we want to do is take that also inside so that we're not responding out of anger. That doesn't mean that anger might not help to fuel some action.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: It does.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: But that it not be governed by parts of us that are angry, for example, and are caught up in that, carried away by the passion.
So, yeah. And what St. Thomas Aquinas says, and Anthony Flood brings this out so well in his book the Metaphysical Foundations of Love and also self love and self governance. In Thomas Aquinas and St Thomas Aquinas, two excellent books, he points out that St Thomas says that the way we love ourselves is the root and form of the way we're going to love others.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: It's the template by which we're going to love others.
And so any parts of me that I hate, I will hate those same parts in other people.
Why? Because once, once that part of it comes up in another person, the part, the counterpart in me, the similar part in me, there's going to be a resonance like two tuning forks, you know, if you Put two tuning forks at the same point. And so I'm going to come up and I'm going to punish that part or I'm going to condemn that part and the other person in the same way that I condemn my own part because this part is now activating this part of me and that's threatening me.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: So this is where discipline comes from sometimes with a little, with little kids. So a 2 year old says, I hate you mommy, you're a bad mommy.
Right? And it activates a shame bearing part in the moment, right.
And that becomes really threatening to the mom because the mom's insecure about her own parenting. And now she's the mother of a child who thinks she's a bad mommy. And she doesn't have a grounding, she's not solid in her own identity as a mother and she doesn't have a deep sense of being a beloved little daughter of God and that she can make mistakes and it can be okay. So her angry part that has suppressed her own shame part is now going to suppress that ain't that part in her daughter, you know, because, and that's what she's doing now in a certain sense that's self protective because she doesn't want to lash out at her child. She doesn't want to, you know, like lose it. But it's really harmful to the two year old because a two year old is not going to make a nuanced sort of statement to mom.
The two year old's not going to say mother, I find that I have parts of me that are being activated by your parts. And I'm not sure that you're fully recollected right now. And I'm worried that, you know, that the anger that you're showing toward me or the rigid rules that you're are really ways that you're externalizing your own internal conflict. And I wish you would stop that.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Stop listening to Dr. Peter's podcast.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: No, I mean they're not going to say that we should be able to rejoice when parents, when kids say that at 2 years old because they're able to first of all have enough confidence that they can challenge us.
Right. And secondly, they're recognizing that there are things they don't like in us.
And you know, and it's not, I wouldn't say in a 2 year old that that's disrespectful. If a 60, well, a 16 year old, you might want to see a little more nuanced kind of approach.
But, and I'M not saying that 2 year olds should just be able to run the world with whatever they think or whatever they want. I'm not, you know, there has to be some definite guardrails on their behavior.
But for them to be angry at mom is not a sin.
And for them to express it by saying, you're a bad mommy, I don't think is a sin. Because they don't have a lot of nuanced ways of evaluating parental behavior.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: My 4 year old granddaughter was having a tiff with her mom the other day and she goes, you are a female.
And that was it.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Wow, that's an accusation.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: I'm not sure how to take that, you know, so.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: But if that mom could really loved herself and loved all those parts, she would be able to be with that child in whatever way that child needed to be with in that time. Even if there needed to be a correction of something.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Right? Right. There's boundaries, limits. But you put a thread out there I want to pick up even affectively. To love yourself. Right. My kids need my will and governance in my love.
They also need. I have a phrase I try to incorporate into conversations that I don't know how to gracefully put there. So I just, you know, I'll just say it like just at random. I want you to know I delight in you.
It's so healing for a kid to hear that.
Or I'll just say it like this, like, I just want you to know you sitting there just makes me happy.
I just feel happy because you're my kid. That's it.
And the Lord looks at us that way. It's almost painful to accept that much love. It takes work, right?
But when I think of loving myself.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: That way, this is where it gets a little trickier.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: That's tough.
But I mean, the Lord, when he wants us to love ourselves, is not just with the will and governance. He wants me to actually delight in the gift of what he's made me. I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: My soul magnifies the Lord. Mary wasn't appraising God out there literally. She was like rejoicing in the Lord specifically within her and shining up from her.
How do you do that, boy? Isn't that the journey? There's a million dollar question. I'll be sitting over here while you talk for the next three hours.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: So again, to create some time to go inside and to work with this on a natural level. And it's really important that we don't just bring it into prayer because some parts May be terrified of God.
Some parts might really struggle with the whole spiritual realm, and some other parts might not let them into that realm. So to actually work in the natural realm with this, to just really take yourself as you are, take you as your innermost self.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: And to set aside some significant time. I'm just talking like maybe five minutes in the morning, five minutes in the evening. That's where we start out in resilient Catholics community with connecting with parts and then seeing if you as your innermost self, you, as the one that is free to be able to love, can go there. Right. So whenever there's like a condemnation of a part, that's another part. Right. That's not the innermost self.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: What's it look like when one party condemns another party?
[00:16:33] Speaker B: I mean, this is where in that example of the mother, she's got a part that's angry at her daughter, but it's because that part is actually angry at another part of her that believes she's a bad person and a bad mother.
So that part is condemning the part that is saying she's a bad mom and a bad person. And that part that is thinking that she's a bad mom and a bad person and is polarized with the angry part. They're locked in combat. Okay. And so what you've got there is a lot of inner tension, and both parts are trying to.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Inner tension. That's a way to tease out something that we say in passing.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Or conflict. An inner conflict.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Inner conflict, yeah. It literally parts of you at war with one another.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Right.
And so what we want to get to eventually is to be able to love wholeheartedly. You know, that's the first great commandment to love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and thy whole soul and thy whole mind and all thy strength. Right. Not just with your soul, not just with your will, but with your heart. Right. So the affective part is there in the great commandment, it can be really helpful to be accompanied by somebody who will love your parts and show you that those parts are lovable.
Okay. So that also can be really healing because sometimes it's just so locked up inside.
But if a part can see you, if a part can see another person loving their innermost self, loving your part, and can kind of look at that part through the other's eyes, that makes it a lot easier. That's why therapy can be helpful or spiritual direction sometimes brings in these components.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Or coaching and honest relationships.
[00:18:20] Speaker B: And just honest, like honest relationships where there's a Communication that I'm glad you exist. I'm glad you're here. I delight in you.
In this part, it's not just you as a unity, but in this particular part, I could say I'm glad you exist. I'm glad you're trying to help. I'm glad that you're here and you're fearfully and wonderfully made, and I'd love to get to know you better.
Like that has a huge impact all of a sudden. Like the whole. That's a game changer. Because now we can work collaboratively now. We're not just in the conflict right now. We're not just in, you know, pressing the gas pedal and the brake at the same time, you know.
And so how do we get there? Some people can get there with prayer.
And it's really, I think, some wonderful books out there.
Father Boniface Hicks, his book Personal Prayer. A Guide to Receiving the Father's Love.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Guide to Receiving the Father's Love.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: A Guide to Receiving Love. Because this is the thing, Chris, this is the thing that people don't understand. We're all about loving, right? We're going to follow the two great commandments. We're going to carry out the gospel. We're going to love, love, love, love.
But we have to tolerate being loved first.
And I use that word tolerating, really deliberately, because it is not pain free to receive the love of God. We all know that real love is given freely, but it's not received freely.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Dang.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: It's not received freely because it's going to cost us.
It's going to cost us because real love, when we take it in, whether that's from God or from our neighbor or from ourselves, if we really take that in, it's gonna burn away things that are sinful. It's gonna burn away things that are vicious.
It's going to even burn away things that are imperfect, right? That are not sinful in themselves, but are imperfect. It's gonna require us to give up the ways that we coped.
It is, in a way, traumatic in a sense, to be loved because it requires a total revolution, a total paradigm shift inside.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: The great divorce comes to mind, right? The man is trying to walk into heaven and the grass is going through his feet. It's too real.
He can't quite handle it yet.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And so remember what love reveals, right?
[00:20:57] Speaker A: You let it in deeper and deeper and it's like, whoa, there's parts of me and my wounds and personality I didn't even know were there. I'd Rather not have looked at. But the love of God keeps seeping in marriage, when it's healthy, does the same dang thing.
Absolutely kicks up all the things that you didn't even know you need help with because another person is loving you in that space.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: And we have to tolerate. We have to be able to receive it. What does St. John tell us in First John 4?
God loved us first.
He didn't require anything of us to love us.
But we want to be able to earn the love. We want to be able to be lovable.
We want to be able to control the love, in a sense. We want to be able to elicit it because of our goodness. You know, we want to overcome our neediness before we judge ourselves worthy to be loved. And I'm saying we got to come as we are, right? So it is easier for us to tolerate being loved if there's an openness to allowing these parts to be able to receive the love.
But we don't want to do that so many times because there are parts of us that may believe that these parts are just too unlovable. Unlovable. They cannot be in the shop window. God, when he passes by, cannot see them.
We've got to keep them in the basement or in the warehouse, right?
And so it's when we can imitate our Lord. See, this is a problem where if we're fragmented, we lose the capacity to imagine what God is actually like or to visualize what God is actually like. We lose the capacity to access that faculty.
And we also lose the capacity, I think, that parts, when they're fragmented, don't have access to the faith we already have.
Like, if a part is fragmented. We were talking about this in the last episode. I don't think it can access the faith we have. It's not that we don't have faith. It's that this part is not connected to that faith. That's what I think. I could be wrong about that. But if we can tolerate being loved and we let the love in. That's why sometimes marriages can save people because they've tolerated being loved, the imperfect love of a spouse. But it was good enough to where maybe God could love me, you know, like, if this person. And that's one of the reasons why I think God wants to work through us like so many people. Sherry Whittell talks a lot about this. Where she talks about in evangelization, she's all about, you know, evangelization. And she talks about the need for pre evangelization, which is the establishing of trust, you know, in something Christian, you know, so if I, as a friend or as a father or as a husband or as a therapist, accept that part of another person and get curious about that and know that that part is intrinsically good, ontologically good, that's the game changer right there. And if. Then, if that part has the experience of me loving that part, not just the respectable parts of the person, but the whole person, the whole package, then maybe. Then maybe God. And I've said this to, like, I've had clients tell me, yeah, you love me, but God doesn't love me.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Oh, dang.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: You know, And I'm like, I'm not greater than God.
I didn't cook up this love in my garage.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Someone's saying, he's not powerful enough to love.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: He's not. Or it's saying, I'm so bad.
But what they've begun, what's begun to happen there is they begin. They've tolerated the love that I could show them.
Right. And that's beginning to open the door to maybe. Maybe. Because they do have to wrestle with the question, is this just me? Is this just me as a person? Am I the only person in the world that could love them? No.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: We see so much of this in a kind of a poisoned religiosity.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: That becomes all about control and having the right system and doing it just right. Look at that. I'm all for doing things right, but when that becomes the preeminent thing, and there's people, plenty of YouTubers, who think we're going to save the world by saving the rubric and having that be just right, as if converting the heart such that the heart would even be interested in these issues.
That's not the relevant thing. Have you read the Gospels?
[00:25:20] Speaker B: What does Paul tell us? The law does not save.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: No. Right. And again, those things are important, but they're important because of. Because of this, because of what it's about, because of the relationship.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: But I think people tend to rest there and stay there because as miserable as that can make people. And people who have that approach to the extreme aren't happy Christians.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:44] Speaker A: They're just not. There's a misery there. But that misery of control feels safer than just being loved, which is, frankly, dangerous. Like a marriage where I'm not controlling my wife and my heart's just raw and open.
That's scary.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's too scary. It's scary until you get a little more used to it.
It's scary until you get a little More used to it.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Then it's awesome. Then it's like riding a wave, right?
There's a billion drops of water collapsing around me. Woo hoo. Right. Somehow I'm riding this thing.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: I love the analogy. Right.
It's an adventure.
But it does take some courage, you know, it does take some faith.
If you seek it though, you will find it. The great tragedy is that most people don't seek it.
That's the great tragedy. You know, people are.
There's a big movement in the 20th century flowing into the 21st century to believe that hell doesn't exist, you know, and that God being good would never send people to hell, you know, as though he's sort of sitting at the big judge's bench and he's got the trapdoor handle and he sends people to hell because. Yeah, because, yeah, you know. But Joseph Pieper, Catholic philosopher, talks about how we talk about heaven on earth and we have examples of like St. Francis of Assisi, who some believe was actually in heaven while still on earth, like he actually had a post eschatological existence.
I see hell on earth. I see, I've been there. I see people so alienated, so isolated, so cut off and choosing it because of a fear of something worse.
And that's the tragedy. And that's something that God, because he respects our capacity to choose, he respects our free will, he's not gonna force on us.
So I am actually a believer in hell because I've seen it.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: Mmm, painful.
Some people think that sin comes from too much self love. And I think sometimes it can, but.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Not if it's ordered.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Well, that's right. You can't have too much of a well ordered thing. Right.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: That's the One thing that St. Thomas says you can't have too much of as actual charity is love.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: It's a participation in the life of God.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: It's a participation in the life of God. And if you are participating in yourself, participating in the life of God, tell me how much is too much.
But see, that's because people have a distorted understanding. They don't really understand what love is.
They don't really understand what love is. And so there's this distortion that self love is really self absorption or it's selfishness.
And I think we need to be in touch with ourselves, with our parts. We need to be journaling sometimes that's really helpful for people.
Drawing out your parts can be really helpful in terms of like being able to connect with them because some parts aren't very verbal, you know, and So I, you know, to be able to draw them out, to be able to share your part's existence with other people that could understand that. Like, that could be really something. Like even my parts being recognized in here on this podcast.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: They really like that.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Like, it's like, yeah, other people, you know, so when we start. And then of course, you know, at Souls and Hearts, we're all about this. We're all about bringing together the very best of all of the approaches, whether they have Catholic origins or not. And we harmonize them with Catholicism. To help people to really love themselves, there's a preliminary step to tolerate being loved. To love oneself, to love God. There's an order to this. And then to love neighbor.
So many people want to jump to loving their neighbor, but they're trying to love their neighbor in a way that skips these other steps and it won't work.
We need to love our neighbor because we love God, because otherwise then we'll love our neighbor for whatever we find lovable in our neighbor.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:44] Speaker B: And that's going to be more like a quid pro quo.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Right? That's a. Yeah.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Divine love is to love with the love of God and for the sake of God.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: So there's an order. We need to tolerate being loved first in all of our parts. If we're going to be integrated, we need to then love ourselves.
Right. So that we can make a gift of ourselves to God and then in union with God, love our neighbor.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Yes. And when we fail to do that, really, I think of self loathing as an all time high. Even though we're telling people, love yourself more than ever, honestly, it's just not working. It's not working. And then all these sins and dysfunctions that we would say come from too much self absorption. It's from a self hatred. Half the time camera kids who are sleeping around, it's because they devalue themselves. They think they're just some meat to share with the world. Right.
How is the secular approach is so radically failing? It's just failing. We're telling it, love yourself, love yourself without God. It just doesn't. I don't know, I guess maybe it's because you have a worldview that says, I'm self aware, space sludge and I should love myself.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Right. There's no computation. I'm the product of evolution, like random.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Mutations and destined for nothing. But believe in yourself. Why?
[00:31:00] Speaker B: Well, that's what we need. And we need to reacquaint ourselves with the hero's journey. This is Gary Chapman.
We need to understand that what we are on is the greatest adventure ever. Like, it puts the Lord of the Rings into a second place. Okay?
[00:31:20] Speaker A: And that's saying a lot.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: And that's saying a lot.
And in the hero's journey, there is this. So this is an arc of all the great hero stories, you know, and Gary Chapman, back in the. I think it was the 50s, sort of distilled it all out. And I love it because it reflects in all these myths and all of that. It reflects reality, what we are called to. And in the hero story, the hero doesn't do it alone. The hero is loved by somebody.
The hero needs a wisdom figure. So in Star wars, which is one of the classic examples, you know, Luke Skywalker has Obi Wan Kenobi, right?
And. And so this progression of first tolerating being loved and dealing, and this takes. This takes. And this takes. This takes real effort. This takes courage. There is. This is a noble endeavor to tolerate being loved. Well, right. This isn't just, you know, pick me, pick me, or, you know, I'm. I'm a needy Karen or something like that. No, this is like. Because we need it, right? And then we go on to, like, all right, God loves me, so now I can love me.
Now I love me so I can make a gift of myself to God. And now God and I can love my neighbor together. But we just want to skip to the end. We just want to love our neighbor because we think that's what will please God. We want to do it in reverse. We want to love our neighbor first so that God will love us, so that maybe we can be okay, and so that maybe we can receive God's love. We want to take it in reverse. We want to turn the hero's journey, in a sense, and reverse. It started at the end.
So we need to be humble enough to know that we need to be loved, not to assume that we don't.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: And then to actually do it. And then to actually do it, really.
Talk is cheap, you know, when scripture's clear that we need to love ourselves, get in agreement with God. And loving ourselves, that's not just an idea or a sentiment we actually have to do. I like the idea about journaling. Where else do you begin? For the kid. And again, this is the difference between the secular world and the Christian world is that we actually have compelling reasons when we say love yourself, not that we're not saying to love yourself, but.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Like, how do we do it? Where does the rubber meet the road? Because a lot of Times Christianity gets criticized, and Catholicism gets criticized.
And the toughest people that I've ever found to help along the road to conversion to Catholicism are psychologists, really. And it's because they're like. So many of them are like, you guys have these high ideals, you know, that you. You aspire to, but you don't help people along the road. You know, you don't have the human. They're looking at the human formation stuff that we have, and it's like, this isn't helpful to people, you know, and then they see all of the psychological dysfunction, and they can attribute it to Christianity or to Catholicism. It's not fair. I don't think. It's not accurate. But this is where, you know, souls and hearts, this is what we're all about.
We're all about bringing together the best of these other resources. So we do a lot of experiential exercises. For example, in the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. Check out episode 91, for example, and I will give you, like, I will go through three experiential exercises to help you connect with yourself.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Check out episode 98, 99, 100, where we're talking about self love, and I will take you through an exercise, you know, to help you do that.
And then that's sort of a taste of what we offer in the resilient Catholics community, which is where we use. And this may sound a little salesy. I guess maybe it does. I don't know.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: I'm gonna ask you to please be salesy.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Okay. All right. So this is where we bring together people loving each other, people helping each other be open to the love of God. We're focused exclusively really on human formation because we're shoring up that natural foundation. We're approaching that integration work. We're starting to get to know our parts.
And we've had 700 people that have been in the RCC. This is not just some little thing. It's been around for a while, and we've been able to perfect it. And we do outcome studies. We're the only outfit I know of that does outcome studies.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: So it's working.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: We're seeing. It's not just anecdotal.
It's actually. We're seeing people shift.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Oh, praise God.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: We're seeing people shift now. Sometimes we see people shift, and they look at the end of the first year angrier, for example. But there was no anger at the beginning. And we're like, oh, you're in touch with an angry part. Like, you're. You're now actually more integrated. We take a look at these. I put together 22 instruments, 22, 22 measures.
And we. We have the parts Finder Pro, which is our process. It includes these 22 measures where if you take that as part of the application process to the RCC, to the Brazilian Catholics community, we will identify between 12 and 15 of your parts.
And not only that, we talk about how these parts are, what their roles are, and how they're interacting with each other. It's speculative. Let me be clear about that. We don't claim to have neuroimaging here and be able to identify them, but what it does is it just opens things up for people. I've had so many people in the feedback sessions because we meet with people one on one. We always do when we do this. And they say you put words to things I've known my whole life, but I've never been able to articulate, well, that's beautiful. And so then we have a structured way of people being able to work with them. I wish I had more resources to give you to say this is how you do it.
There's a book by Jay early called Self Therapy that brings in some of these things. There's a workbook by Bonnie Weiss called the Self Therapy Workbook. These are secular approaches. Dr. Jerry's book, the Litanies of the Heart.
Dr. Jerry Crete.
That book has a lot of exercises in it as well. That would actually be something really helpful to read through if you're interested in this.
But it's also really helpful to not do it alone.
And so what we're doing at Souls and Hearts is bringing together a community of people that want to do this together, this work together. And I really think they're pioneers.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: That's awesome. I also want to say, if you're watching this, you're taking time on yourself. And I mean, that's really. That's a form of self love. And it's also little stuff like working out, reading a book, having a cup of tea. And there's some people maybe listening as they change a diaper who are thinking, I literally have no time for any of this.
But you know, when we say we don't have time, we also just maybe aren't prioritizing ourselves. I know, easy for me to say, I'm not currently changing a diaper, but there's a truth to that, right?
And I pointed out things that are actions, action oriented, but the affective realm, if you're not feeling that, that is where it kicks up, a realm that we Just maybe opened a can of worms and people are thinking, loving your parts, what is that? That's going to take some extra work. And so thank you for doing that work and walking through that with people. When you find a good Catholic therapist, when you find what you guys are doing, it helps you actually not just do these things and act, but come to like yourself.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: That's a part of it. It's not just the, yes, I am loving you.
I'm willing your highest good, because God loves you, because you have ontological goodness. That can feel a little cold. That can feel a little cold.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Right. Don't say that to your kids.
I think you're ontologically good, sweetheart.
[00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
That's harsh. And we need both, right?
We need to be loved unconditionally, but we also need to be loved because, yeah, we have a sense that we're lovable like that. We deserve that.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: You know, I don't want you to miss your flight because I love you. But I do want to end with this prayer. Okay, let's do it. I found this on your website. A link to it from your website. Okay. But it's from the faceofmercy.org, the litany of self love.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: It was pretty powerful.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:05] Speaker A: This is. I mean, again, people are gonna hear that and say, that's not based. That's not manly, that's not tough. Oh, really?
[00:39:11] Speaker B: You really take that in?
[00:39:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: This is so Mikole Amalu.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: Seriously, any tough guy who's got no interior toughness can beat himself up. That's easy, man.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: And this came out of. This came out of the personal struggle of Mikole Amalu. And I've met McColl. I have a lot of respect for her.
This was not earned easy. This is not cheap grace at all.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: You want to overcome. You want to face the Balrog within.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:39] Speaker A: There's the litany of yourself.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: We are a big fan of what they're doing
[email protected] with that.
[00:39:45] Speaker A: It's beautiful. We'll link to this below the video too. But we're going to pray this and I'm going to. There's in a litany, the leader says one thing and there's a response. So you'll say the response and you guys say the response with Dr. Peter. So in the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, the first set of responses is, deliver me, Jesus from the pain of self hatred.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus from a negative view.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Of my body and self. Deliver me, Jesus from disbelief in your love for me.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: From doubting that I was created good.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:18] Speaker A: From believing I am a burden.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:21] Speaker A: From the desire to be completely self reliant.
[00:40:24] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: From negative self talk and inner dialogue.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: From the demands of perfectionism.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: From my own unattainable expectations.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: From the pull to neglect my bodily needs.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: From excessive ascetic practices that you are not asking of me.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: From the denial of comforts that would draw me closer to you.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: That's good.
From the temptation to harm myself bodily, emotionally or spiritually.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: From the temptation to work without rest.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: When I doubt your love for me.
[00:41:05] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: When I want to hide from your love.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: Deliver me, Jesus.
[00:41:11] Speaker A: This is powerful man, isn't it?
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: When I doubt that you want my good. Deliver me, Jesus. Oh, sorry. Next set is Be with me, Jesus.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Be with me. Okay.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: When I doubt that you want my.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Good, Be with me, Jesus.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: When I despise myself, Be with me, Jesus. When I engage in intentional self harm.
[00:41:31] Speaker B: Be with me, Jesus.
[00:41:32] Speaker A: When I cannot escape my own self criticism.
[00:41:35] Speaker B: Be with me, Jesus.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: When I get disconnected from my own self and lost in dissociation.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Be with me, Jesus.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: When I numb my pain in unhealthy ways. Be with me, Jesus When I avoid healthy self care.
Be with me, Jesus When I neglect my own needs. Be with me, Jesus that I am your beloved daughter or son. Jesus, I trust in you that I was created in your image and likeness.
[00:42:02] Speaker B: I trust in you.
[00:42:03] Speaker A: Jesus, I trust or Jesus, I trust in you that you are wildly in love with me. Jesus, I trust in you that you desire my good.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: Jesus, I trust in you that you.
[00:42:13] Speaker A: Will fulfill my good desires.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Jesus, I trust in you that I.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Am worthy of care and attention.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: Jesus, I trust in you that I.
[00:42:20] Speaker A: Am worthy of rest.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Jesus, I trust in you that I.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Am worthy of food and nourishment.
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Jesus, I trust in you that I.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: Am worthy of the care and love I extend to others. Jesus, I trust in you that you want me to will my own good.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Jesus, I trust in you, Jesus.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Thank you so much for loving us.
Help us to get in agreement with you. Because when we don't think we're lovable, we're not agreeing with you and we're not agreeing with you, we're wrong.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: That is a great way to land that point.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Thanks for helping us get in agreement with God.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: It is so good to be with you and I really appreciate you all staying here and taking this in. So thank you for listening and for watching.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Love you, brother. Thanks so much, man. We love you.
Thanks for watching. It's an honor. Really. It's an honor. It's an honor to be able to do this.
So thanks for listening. Thanks for letting us bless you. Thanks for letting us show a little of the love of God for you.
